


a flutter between us

by jouissant



Category: Third Crusade RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Political Alliances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 05:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13047657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: Richard of Aquitaine had bound his soul to his duchy.





	a flutter between us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Anabel! Thanks for making me fall in love with these two. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it, and all apologies for any glaring historical errors.

Richard of Aquitaine had bound his soul to his duchy. 

It was no small thing to yield one's very being this way, no easier path that he should be wedded henceforth to a mate not hewn of flesh but of stone and mud and turf. Should he ever forget or find himself overly distracted he had his mother to remind him, or the lays of the troubadours, or his infernal father Henry of England. Henry weighed heaviest on his mind now, as Richard wiped the sweat from his brow and spurred his mare onward to the looming clash at Chateauroux. 

The June air was rich with perfume from the climbing roses in the hedgerows. Richard's mare was young and skittish, and hadn't ever been east of Poitou. She huffed and danced sideways as though she disliked the footing, the turf strange beneath her hooves. Richard rubbed her neck absently, St. Valerie's likeness heavy on the fourth finger of his right hand. The ring had been Eleanor's idea, and when he slid it onto his finger at Limoges at fourteen he felt a love as fierce and true as if it had truly been a wedding band. He still remembered the scent of incense and candlewax, the monks bearing solemn witness. He had indeed felt married then, felt as though his soul had settled out into its rightful home, and the crowds cheered in the streets to see him pass as though they felt it too. 

By the time he arrived at Chateauroux the hour was late, the sky black. Henry's entourage was clustered around one side of camp, and on the other side, across a roaring fire, sat Philip of France. Philip Augustus, Dieudonné, who'd spent the scant few years of his reign proper flitting from one Angevin to another in a flurry of alliances Richard struggled to keep straight. Philip, who glowered now before the fire at the center of a makeshift court, chin cupped in one hand, thinking doubtlessly of the siege and of besting Henry and, should it come to that, of open war. 

Philip, who laid as much claim as Aquitaine to Richard's soul. 

The two of them had known for years, of course. Impossible not to. The lays said the soul would recognize its mate as one does a song known by heart, an ever-present melody issued to the world and, at last, sung back. And that was how it had felt to see Philip for the first time, so natural as to be foreign to a boy who'd never had the chance to grow wild, whose destiny was mapped before he was born. At times he felt certain everyone knew, at others he thought the two of them would go to their graves bearing the inconvenient secret. In any case, no one had ever seemed to acknowledge it, save once when, as a boy, Richard had stumbled into the library to find his mother flushed with wine and giggling in the lap of a lady in waiting, one hand pressed to her cheek. She'd passed evenings there when she was bored at court, merrymaking and devising entertainments. On this evening Richard remembered the room was lit with candles, a troubadour sitting on a velveteen chaise tuning his lute and humming. He meant only to cut through the library on the way to his chambers, but Eleanor had spied him and cooed at him, and said he ought to stay and be tried in the Court of Love. This was one of his mother's favorite games, and its rules were simple: a young lover came before the Court and told their tale of woe, and the Court would hear it and give advice accordingly. The quality of the advice appeared directly proportionate to the amount of wine consumed by the assembly, though Richard supposed the lovelorn could not afford to be overly discerning. 

"Come, my son," his mother said. "Come and sit and plead your case. Perhaps if you are convincing—" 

The lady in waiting must have seen him flush, for she made a sympathetic face and plucked at Eleanor's sleeve. "Oh, you're embarrassing him." 

"—you'll wed your soul's mate after all." 

They had all laughed at that, in the appreciative way nobles always did when their betters made a joke, and the troubadour had strummed his instrument so that the whole room had seemed to hum with music, and Richard had very much wanted to sink into the worn stone floors. Whatever will become of Aquitaine, they crowed, should her duke wed for soul's-love!

The worst of it was that Richard hadn't yet understood what they meant, and it wasn't until much later that he thought perhaps his mother had known everything, and had allowed things to unfold as they did in spite of it. In retrospect, he should not have been surprised. For although Eleanor loved him dearly (some said best of all), she was as good as Philip was at flitting between her sons, so much so that King Henry had at last seen fit to clip her wings, imprison her across the channel and limit what he had always called her meddling to inked missives. Richard did not, at present, miss her, though that was changeable as weather. 

He was no longer the red-faced boy hiding in the library, and he no longer had his mother's erstwhile help. He knew also that no amount of bargaining before his mother's Court could have won him his soul's mate. His soul was spoken for already, and the rest of him betrothed to Alys of France, Philip's half-sister. Richard didn't waste time lamenting the irony of the match. It simply was. He was devoted to Aquitaine and promised to Alys. If his soul had other plans, it was the outlier, an untrained branch in a privet maze. He and Richard grew up friendly in the uneasy way of princes, and when Philip gained the throne and solicited _homages_ from Richard's older brothers Richard understood and was unmoved, if uneasy in a way he couldn't quite name. At any rate, he had plenty to distract him as the years passed, and his soul seemed to matter less and less as he learned to rule, as he grew into his lion's heart. Some called him cruel, and when he heard it he felt a peculiar satisfaction. He felt at times like a lean dog, kept too long starved not to snap. If his critics wished for a softer hand, he thought, perhaps they should have been more loyal, less quick to turn an eye to the Young King or to Geoffrey when they came sniffing at the border. Richard ground his teeth together, jaw clenched tight enough to make his head ache. He did this when he was angry, and he was angry now. 

Across the fire at Chateauroux Philip looked up, and Richard nodded at him. 

***

Late into the night Richard was roused from a daze that was not quite sleep, and summoned to Philip's tent. The shelter was utilitarian, and Philip sat alone at the far end of it on a straw-stuffed bedroll. He was crosslegged and entirely awake, eating with his hands from a trencher set in his lap. Richard had eaten poorly on the journey, and the food smelled good. Something lean and gamey, a hare, perhaps, roasted a rich brown and basted with a thin gravy. Philip looked at him and nodded as though belatedly returning Richard's earlier gesture. Not a nod of welcome, not really, but of acknowledgement. You've come, the way I knew you would. Philip pried a gobbet of meat from the roast's stringy thigh and popped it into his mouth, licked his fingers with alacrity, not to savor but to free them of grease. 

"Have you come for England?" Philip asked. 

"You know I haven't," Richard said. 

Philip nodded again. "Mmm. Why then? Sit, please. You'll have ridden a far ways." 

"From Poitou." 

"I saw your horse," Philip said. "The pretty grey." 

"She's too green," said Richard. 

"Give her to me a season," Philip said. "I'll ride it out of her. Are you hungry, Aquitaine?" 

"I'm all right." 

"You look hungry. If you haven't come for England, why have you? Richard, _sit_." 

He'd begun to pace, almost without knowing it. Realizing it he sighed and came and sat beside Philip on the bedroll, so close their knees were touching. Philip wiped his fingers on the cloth and plucked at a protruding spear of straw. "So?" Philip asked. 

"Not for England," Richard said. 

"No?" 

"No. He means to take my lands from me. He means to give them to John." He sounded petulant to his own ears, but talking of his father drew it out of him alchemically, the same way Philip made his heart swell and stutter simply by virtue of proximity, the right ingredients set together. Or the wrong ones- combine Henry and land and at least two sons and you'd have yourself a rout, no mistake. Richard ran his thumb over St. Valerie and bit his lip. 

"You Angevins," Philip said. "Like squabbling children, to the last." He laughed, high and musical. 

"You lack brothers," Richard said wearily.

"I do. I've had to borrow yours." 

Richard thought there was a cant of regret to Philip's tone now. "When Geoffrey died they said you tried to join him in his grave. They said you had to be—restrained." 

He swallowed. He could see it even now, in his mind's eye like a shadow-play against a wall. Philip screaming, cheeks wet with tears, struggling in the arms of his knights. He felt a bitter throb of jealousy at his heart. He ignored it as he had for as long as he could remember. Soul's-love, he said to himself. It's only fate. It means nothing. 

Philip tossed a slender bone into the corner of the tent. He shrugged. "Drama," he said. "Politics. Nothing more. You know that. You kissed your father's feet and wept for his forgiveness not so very long ago, and yet here we sit, conspiring against him." 

"Is that what we're doing?" 

"I can only assume. You still haven't told me why you've come." 

In truth, Richard didn't know himself. All he knew was that he'd been angry, angry enough to consider beating bloody the messenger who carried word of troops massing (if you could call John's paltry showing a mass) at the northern border. Angry enough to ride until he found his father, to root the sore spot out and press directly. 

"I think I am hungry after all," Richard said. 

Philip called for a second roast hare to be brought from the fire, and it came in on a spit, borne by a nervous page who tripped over his own two feet and nearly sent the whole thing flying like a javelin. Philip took the hare and a second trencher with a nod of thanks and slid the spit from its mouth. 

"Savage fare," he said, raising an eyebrow at Richard. "I miss Paris." 

The hare wasn't awful, though it was stringy, and Richard thought he'd go around all night afraid of something between his teeth. The meal filled his belly, at any rate, settled down inside him below the softening throb of his heart. They said the soul dwelled in the meat of that organ, that only cutting the heart out of a man could sever his soul's ineffable tie to its mate. Richard hoped never to give Philip cause to desire the rending of the bond between them, if only because he found himself rather fond of his life. 

"Will you return to Paris directly?" Richard asked.

He stared into a gout of candleflame and the light it cast around the tent. He was beginning to be tired, road-weary and sore. The grey mare was well-built but not yet an easy ride. Perhaps the stables at the royal court would do her good after all. He kicked at the dirt floor beneath Philip's bedroll. 

"That depends on your father," said Philip. 

"It does, doesn't it," said Richard slowly. He was beginning to have an idea. "Philip," he said presently. "Does anyone at Paris know of us?" 

Philip frowned, as though attempting to divine what Richard was getting at. "I am not certain," he said. "My father knew, perhaps. Or suspected, though once the apoplexy gripped him he barely knew how to use a spoon, to say nothing of the—" 

"The whims of his son's immortal soul?" 

Philip rolled his eyes. "That." He sighed. "Does Henry know? Did your brothers?" 

"My mother, perhaps. I think my father suspects, as yours did." 

"Suspects is better," said Philip. "More bothersome by far not to know a thing for certain." He smiled, and there was a glint of meanness in it. 

Richard's hand was very close to Philip's where he'd set the trencher down on the floor. He wanted badly to touch it, could feel the ridges of Philip's knuckles against his palm as if they were already there. He had not been often in Philip's company, though being so close now he found he couldn't say whether or not that had been intentional. His head was cloudy as with drink, the tent overly warm. His belly was full, and Philip smelled pleasant, like the woodsmoke from the fire outside, a human sourness beneath that Richard found paradoxically appealing. When he thought on the moment later, with the benefit of hindsight, he would wonder how much of the scheme had been his, and how much Philip's, and how much had been down to the tidal pull between them. He'd only ever felt its ghost before, he realized. Perhaps some instinct told him the brunt of it would push him too far afield. Years hence, it would, but Richard didn't know that now. Now he was here, and he saw no reason not to stay. When he spoke again it was roughly. 

"How Henry should fret over it, if he thought it were true, that we had given ourselves over to the thing. How it would eat at him."

"Spend the night with me," Philip said, his voice a murmur.

"What?" 

"In the tent," said Philip quickly. "It will…disturb him, if he thinks we're up all night in parley. And if he assumes differently—" 

He flushed, and Richard was reminded of how young he was. The two of them had always seemed of an age, or Philip older; he'd ruled France _de facto_ by fifteen, and there were hollows beneath his eyes that Richard had only lately come to know. Richard wondered briefly if his quarrels with his father and with John Lackland truly did seem to Philip like a child's game. 

"If he assumes differently it will disturb him all the more," said Richard. "Very well. Call your page to see to my mare. Have him skirt Henry's camp on his way back, and be loud about it." He groaned, and let himself lean back against the bedroll. 

"Are you very tired?" asked Philip. He was watching Richard with softness, a familiarity that suggested they'd shared a bed before and would again, though of course they hadn't. 

"Not very," said Richard, and promptly fell asleep. 

He awoke the next morning to find Philip gone, the candles long burned out. Straw stabbed all along his back, putting paid to the thought of rolling over and going back to sleep. He was cold, and he drew his cloak about him as he ducked out of the tent. He had a thought for modesty, but then he remembered what they meant to do, and that modesty was contraindicated. Sure enough, one of his own men stopped dead to watch him, and Richard raised a hand in greeting. 

"What news of King Henry?" Richard asked, and the man continued to boggle. "Speak, sir, unless your tongue's been cut out." 

"Retreated. King Philip came to terms this morning. Sir, your orders?" 

"Pack," said Richard. "We ride for Paris also." 

Philip's troupe waited at a crossroads five miles from Chateauroux. Philip sat easily on his horse, a rangy chestnut, long legs hanging loose from the stirrups. He appeared to be dozing, but when Richard drew closer he sat up and squinted at him, one hand over his eyes to mask them from the late morning sun. 

"Have you invited yourself to court?" he asked. 

Richard grinned. "I thought we might drive the point home. And my mare could use the discipline of a long ride." 

"Get off of her," Philip said. "I want to try her." 

"Now?" 

"Come on. Anyway, mine matches your hair. You're well suited." He was out of the saddle already, one hand on his hip, and Richard felt somehow shaken to think of Philip considering his hair, and didn't lose the feeling until they'd swapped their mounts and gotten their men underway. 

***

Philip rode out under his own standard, and Richard went behind him, and they set out for Paris like that. Only late in the day did Richard look up to see that Philip had slowed his horse and circled back to ride beside him, and when he did he started. The chestnut's ears flicked backwards as though in disapproval. 

"Are you brooding?" Philip asked. 

"No." 

"You should be pleased. Henry asked about you this morning. I pretended not to know what he was talking about." 

"In the manner that made it clear you knew precisely?" 

"Perhaps," said Philip. He was grinning again, smile licking at the borders of his thin face. Before the previous night fireside Richard hadn't seen him up close in a long while. He seemed boyish, hair protruding from the brim of his helm at angles. But still that weary look to him, as if the ride, this game they'd begun, was only a brief stay on a far longer journey. 

They camped together at night, their troupes lighting a fire and clustering together. The weather was fine and the air festive, and the days had grown long enough that the fire was scarcely needed for warmth at all, was merely an axis upon which the traveling party could turn. Women would approach from nearby villages, and one or two of them could always sing. Get enough wine in a man and he'd recall a few chords on the lute or gitar he'd been taught by a nursemaid years ago, and that was before you accounted for the minstrels and troubadours in the company. So there was music, and wine, and meat cooked over a spit in the rustic fashion Philip had complained about that first night and continued to complain about while stuffing himself with hart or hare and drinking lustily from a wineskin. Richard thusly felt a sort of joy and ease he could barely recall feeling since he was a child, and when he watched Philip in the firelight he found himself forgetting his father and John, forgetting Aquitaine altogether, and though this lapse should by rights have concerned him it did not, and if it began to he had only to look at Philip to chase the feeling away. They didn't share a tent again, and Richard had begun to wonder if, out of eyeshot of his father, their association would truly be strictly political. He was unsure what to make of the accompanying feeling of rather bitter disappointment, but then Philip looked at him one night beside the fire and smiled. 

"In Paris," Philip said, "you'll lodge with me." 

And there was wine on his lips, and Richard's heart had begun to sing that sweet and familiar song, the one that seemed ever present at the back of his mind, as some lingering perfume. There was nothing to do but agree. 

***

They arrived at Paris in a rainstorm, and Richard had the sense of a sweeping chaos as they clattered through the gates of the city and onto the cobbles before the castle. It was only rain, he thought, yet there was a fervor to get inside exacerbated by the length of the journey, and Richard found himself caught up in it, soaked to the skin, shivering and laughing. Richard was overseeing one of Philip's grooms at the dappled shoulder of his mare when he felt a touch on his shoulder, a young page shifting this way and that on the straw floor, and was informed his trunk had been delivered to the king's chambers, and he was to be shown there at his leisure. From the nervous set of the boy's shoulders it was strongly implied that Richard's leisure ought to be now, and so he left the groom with instructions for a poultice for the mare's tender right front foot and followed the page out of the stables and into the inviting warren of the castle.

He was announced at the door to Philip's chambers, and when he was bid enter the page nodded at him to go inside, probably eager for Richard to leave his sight so he might call his task completed. Richard would oblige him, though not before admitting to himself that he felt all at once faintly nervous of what he might find behind the door. He drew himself up and entered to find only an unassuming corridor, limned with torches, and he started down it, met halfway by a pale figure clad in white who was a ghost until he drew close to her and saw she was only a chambermaid, smiling. 

"My lady," he said. She didn't speak to him, only passed him by, the passage narrow enough that their shoulders brushed in a rustle of silk. She put her hand over her mouth, but he saw that her smile had widened. She went on down the hall, and left him no choice but to continue on. 

The corridor opened onto a chamber that was at once grand and intimate, a warm and cavelike space where Philip sat at a writing desk, head bent over a stack of parchment. He looked up when Richard came into the doorway, squinting. Philip blinked at him, and Richard saw the moment when whatever humour he put forth reached Philip, was drawn into his lungs like smoke. He smiled, though it was a moment before it quite reached his eyes. Richard leaned against the wall. This close to Philip, in such intimate quarters, he thought himself in danger of swooning. It was as if he'd been beset by illness, some miasma that had surrounded him on their journey to court and to which Richard had, at last, given in.

"I know now why you kept us apart," Richard said. 

Philip frowned. "It makes one irritable," he said. "To be so close, and not to…" He paused, made a choked little noise. "Will you come here?" 

The question was plaintive, so much so that Richard was taken aback. It was also impossible to resist, and he crossed the room to stand beside Philip almost unconsciously, so that when he found himself with Philip's cheek pressed to his tunic he was surprised. 

"If Henry could see us," he started, meaning to make light of it, but Philip shuddered as with fever. Again Richard moved without thinking, and sank his fingers into Philip's dark hair. Philip laughed, a disconcerting sound, and when Richard tightened his grip on Philip and tilted his head back he thought only of making it stop. 

Philip swallowed. The line of his throat was exposed as for a blade. They looked at one another. "Is this your homage?" Philip asked. 

Richard realized then that somewhere on the trip to Paris he had ceased to think of Philip as his liege. It was a shock to understand that Philip hadn't, but appealing all the same somehow. Richard knelt and kissed Philip, not his hand or his foot but his red mouth. 

He felt clumsy, which he disliked, but Philip made a pleased noise and wrapped his hand around the nape of Richard's neck, and so Richard pressed onward. Philip's lips were dry. Their mouths together made a wet noise like wine poured into a goblet, and Richard felt the same indulgent anticipation now as he did at the outset of a fine meal. He was unpracticed; there had been dalliances, of course, but mostly he had occupied himself all these years with the duchy. At times he had allowed the spilling of blood to slake what lust arose. He felt he could bend a wayward baron to his will while blindfolded, yet he was unsure now where to put his hands. He allowed Philip to guide him up from the floor. He was deft in his motions, sure, and Richard thought, surprisingly, of his brothers. He wanted to ask Philip if he'd done this before, but the question seemed impossibly childish and he kept his mouth shut. 

Philip walked him backwards to the bed, hewn of dark wood with a heavy canopy. Richard had occasion to inspect it, for when the backs of his knees hit the edge of the mattress Philip continued to advance until Richard let himself fall onto his back. Philip climbed easily onto the bed and sat unceremoniously astride him, pinning his body to the mattress at the hips. 

Richard had struggled at times with penitence. When he took himself in hand at night he knew the act to be fruitless, and thus sinful, and he wondered what the monks at Limoges would think of this, what penance they would dole out. A year of chastity, maybe, or abstinence from meat. Philip moved atop him and made him cry out, and he must have looked troubled, or perhaps Philip knew his thoughts, for he smiled wryly and ground himself against Richard all the harder. 

"In a moment I shall remove your tunic," he said thoughtfully. "What is it, Aquitaine?" 

"Nothing," said Richard. 

"I'll guess, then. You wonder how our congress could be acceptable." 

Richard looked away. Philip laid a hand on his cheek and guided him back. "You do what you wish and agonize over it afterwards," he said. "It's far less painful to square yourself with the thing at the outset and not look back." 

"Is it so easy?" 

"It's sinful to spill your seed where it can't beget a child," said Philip crisply, as though reciting. "Yet I've thought it out, dear Richard. You're here with me now"—he leaned down then, and kissed the corner of Richard's mouth— "and I promise you, you and I will beget _something_." 

"You've thought it out," said Richard. 

Philip shrugged. "Our souls cry out to one another," he said. "There must be some purpose in it." 

Richard felt hot with embarrassment. He was unused to being anticipated. When he rode to Chatoureux he'd thought himself decisive, congratulated himself for the idea. Now it seemed Philip had been waiting for him, and the realization chafed. He tensed and made as if to sit up, but Philip ran his hands over his shoulders and made a shushing noise, as if Richard was an infant or an untamed horse. The sound made him feel worse, and he tossed his head against the bedding. 

"Lie back," Philip said. 

"Philip—" 

"Lie back. Are you tired again? I'll call a page in with your things. It's enough to see you here, in this bed. No matter what we're doing. I'll have a man ride for Henry's court, or send a message. He won't know the difference." 

He spoke frenetically. He reminded Richard of a bird beating itself against a window. 

"I'm not tired," said Richard. 

He wasn't. Flush as they were Philip must know it, too; he was just as stiff against Richard's breeches as vice versa, and Richard was impressed by how even his voice was. He wondered if closeness was all that was required to soothe Philip's earlier irritability. He had wondered from time to time, in private moments and often in the dark, if joining with Philip in this way would be somehow spectacular. His heart beat time behind his ribs and he knew, watching Philip watch him, that for all his savoir-faire Philip had asked himself the same question.

He sat up carefully, slowly enough that Philip wouldn't think he was trying to bolt. He took hold of Philip's hands, laid them against the rough linen of his tunic. He was sure Philip could feel how his heart pounded. "Cut it out of me, if you wish," he said. He thought of Philip at Geoffrey's grave. _Drama. Politics._

"What?" 

"My heart." 

Richard yanked his tunic off over his head. He saw Philip start at his bare chest and felt a thrill, but he wouldn't be distracted now from what he meant to do. At once he felt wild with ambition, sure as he'd been on the road to Chatoureux. But then he'd been cowed: John nipping at Aquitaine's heels at the end of Henry's tight leash. Now, across from Philip, he feared nothing, cared for no man but him, cared for no land but France. The two of them together, Richard thought, and Aquitaine nestled in fealty as securely as a babe in arms. 

"You asked for my homage," Richard said. "I would swear it to you now." 

He would swear again a year hence, before his father, and when he did he would look up from the floor at Philip's feet and think of this moment, and later still he would think of it again and curse himself. But now he promised Philip Anjou in the curve of his back, turned on hands and knees on the coverlet, Normandy in the slide of their flesh together. Philip had some skill at this mode of lovemaking, and Richard let that fact strike against the surface of his brain and glance off without quite sinking in. Better to imagine them both fumbling virgins, known only to one another. But Philip seemed drawn to Richard's inexperience, held him as he shuddered, wiped his issue across his twitching belly with pride. Only then did Philip hold him fast and take him the way Richard imagined a king ought. Richard felt delirious with pleasure, and as Philip cried out against the nape of his neck he thought that perhaps the act was fruitless, but that Philip had been correct: there would be something conceived between them, for better or for worse. 

Perhaps it was only fate, and soul's-love, and all the rest of it. Perhaps Eleanor had known all along, would laugh to see Richard turn against his father so predictably and tell him he'd pled his case to the Court of Love after all, with ringing success. Perhaps in that moment in the bedchamber Richard could see along the corridor of hazy decades as through a veil of smoke, could see Bonsmoulins and Cyprus and Saladin and the rest of it, and perhaps when he did he took measure of his life in some way and found the future wanting. Better, then, to do as Philip said. Not to look back. In the Holy Land when he and Philip parted ways for the last time he would realize, bereft and furious, that he had plunged so dauntlessly ahead that he could barely remember anything of the two years' sweetness that set them on their course. Before Henry died. Before everything changed. 

_Our souls cry out to one another. There must be some purpose in it._

Richard twisted in Philip's arms and kissed him with brutality.


End file.
